Facebook Graph Search, A Social Search Engine

Forget Googling, try Facebook Graph Search

Graph search lets you search for more than you have been able to find before. You can use simple phrases to search for sets of people, places and things that match specific characteristics. These search results help you explore connections between people, places and things, and make fun discoveries.

For example, you can search for friends of your friends in a new city you have moved to, look up photos by classmates from a specific time period, or see photos friends and others have shared with you from famous landmarks.

When you pair up phrases like, Photos of and friends or co-workers and your current city, interests, or likes you can discover things friends have in common that you never realized before, find new activity partners, discover great music similar to bands you already listen to, make your own travel guide, and more.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is announcing Graph Search, Facebook’s new social search engine. The search engine, with a new integration of Microsoft Bing, ramps up Facebook’s ongoing competition with Internet search leader Google. It also presents a number of potential new revenue opportunities for Facebook.

Zuckerberg starts by saying there are two ways to connect people in Facebook: staying connected and making new connections. Today Facebook’s focusing on how to find information. There are three ways to get information on Facebook: News Feed, Timeline and Graph Search, he says. “People want to know what is going on around in the world around you. That’s News Feed.” The second is Timeline to learn about people

The third way to find things is through search. Zuck calls it Graph Search. This is not web search, he emphasizes. Graph search shows private information that isn’t in web search.

Searching for “hip hop,” for example, gives you information links to pages about hip hop. Graph search is designed to return the answer, not links to an answer, he says. He’s showing a search for “My college friends from San Francisco.”

In the demo: Facebook is showing a search of “friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter.” The list can also be narrowed down by school, home town, gender, school, relationship and other factors using drop downs on the right hand side of the search results. The list of people also shows what other likes the people have and how they are connected to you.

Searching people: By typing in “friends of friends who are single men in San Francisco and who are from India” in the search box, the search engine highlights those search terms and brings up a list of eligible bachelors for matchmaking example. The search engine reads natural language and turns it into terms to search on.

Searching photos: You can type “photos of my friends taken in Paris” or “photos of my friends taken in national parks.” The searches bring up big tiled photos of the photos in that category. Or you can just search for “photos I like.” This brings in social gestures such as the “Like” that Facebook already has that tag photos and other objects. This is also data that Facebook has that competitors don’t. You can only see the photos that people have shared with you.

Searching interests: You can type in “Movies my friends like” or “TV shows my friends like.” Clearly this section of search has revenue potential. You can also search for “Videos by TV shows liked by my friends” this will bring up just the videos that TV shows have posted. “TV shows liked by doctors” shows that doctors like to watch Grey’s Anatomy. You can also search and see what kind of music people who like Mitt Romney or Barack Obama like.

Searching places: When traveling you can search for “bars in Dublin liked by people who live in Dublin” to get local insider information. Or search for people who have been to Ireland.

On privacy: Facebook has privacy shortcuts in a button on the upper right hand corner. Click on “Who can see my stuff” then photos to see the photos I have uploaded or that are tagged of me. Or you can see just the photos I’ve hidden from your Timeline. You can also send a message to the person who uploaded the photo asking them to take the photos down. For those inappropriate photos.

Zuckerberg is back on stage: This is in beta. And this is a new way for people to see information, he says. He’s showing “bulk untagging” settings. “It’s not enough to build the tools,” he says. Facebook is adding a notice at the top of Facebook to notify them of the changes and how they work.

There’s also a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine included for things that can’t be found in Facebook’s Graph Search. If the search doesn't match what Facebook has, there are other options from Bing search. “When you can’t find what you’re looking for we have a partnership with Bing,” Zuckerberg says. Weather, for example, isn't in Graph Search but is in Bing. “I don’t think people will come to Facebook to do web search. That isn't the intent of this.” But if you need something, Bing is there.

How is Bing integrated?

As you type in a search, if we can’t answer the search, we show suggestions from Bing, he says. “We have a great partnership with the team at Microsoft,” Zuckerberg says. “We continue to work with Microsoft to make web search better with social signals.” And vice versa.